Random thoughts on the current ideas and events that impinge on a biblical worldview

Wednesday, August 9, 2017

Slavery in the Promised Land

When the Hebrews left Egypt, they had endured slavery
and forced labor for one hundred years. They knew what
it was like working for hard taskmasters.

They had come to Egypt along with many
other Western Canaanite Semitic people in a wave of
migration beginning about 1800 B.C. They settled in
Lower Egypt along the Nile River in a land called Goshen
along with the multitude of other Semitic or Asiatic
people. These Semitic people later became known as the
Hyksos. Joseph, Jacob's son, due to wise council he had
given Pharaoh, had risen to a place of authority and
served as Pharaoh's governor (Genesis 42:6).

In the years that followed Joseph's death
the Hyksos people and the Hebrews grew more numerous and
stronger, and by 1650 B.C. the Hyksos, meaning foreign
rulers, had come to rule all of Lower Egypt from Avaris, the Hyksos capital. The Egyptians,
however, resisted the rule of the Hyksos and in a war
between Lower Egypt and Upper Egypt that ended in 1550
B.C. they expelled the Hyksos from Egypt.

At that point Canaanites and the Hebrews, who remained in
Egypt and who were virtually indistinguishable from the
Hyksos were subjected to increasing oppression.The Bible
says that a Pharaoh came to power "to whom Joseph meant
nothing." He conscripted the Hebrews into forced labor,
and so the Hebrews were slaves for nearly 100 years. The
Bible describes their servitude as harsh.

When Moses rose to lead the Hebrews out of
Egypt, the treatment they had experienced as slaves was
a fresh and bitter memory they took with them. At the
mountain where Moses received the law from God that
would govern their life as a nation, laws were included
to ensure that the Hebrews did not turn to enslaving
their own people or treating others as they had been
treated.

Here are some of those Old Testament laws:

Exodus 21:2, Hebrew slaves.

Hebrews might become slaves, usually because of
economic necessity. But Hebrew slaves were to be set
free after 7 years. They were to be set free fully
provisioned (Deut. 15:12-15). But a slave wife,
if she had been purchased separately by the slave owner
and she became the wife of a slave later, was not set
free at the same time. She apparently still had to
fulfill the 7 years of service due her master.

Exodus 21:7-11, women slaves.
When a woman was purchased as a slave she was to be
considered the wife of the slave owner. She had the
rights of a wife, and that included protection from
being sold to someone else. She would not be displaced
by a later wife. If she was not treated as a wife, she
had the right to her freedom.

Exodus 21:20, killing a slave.
If a slave owner killed a slave, it was a crime to be
punished. Whether that was to be capital punishment or
some other is not certain in the verse. But because no
other penalty is required, we can infer the same
punishment for a man who kills another either by
accident or intention (Ex. 21:12-14).

Exodus 21:21, 26-27, injury to a
slave/servant.

If a slave owner injures his slave but the slave
recovers from his injuries, the loss to the slave owner
of the time of recovery was considered to be the
penalty. But if the injury was serious enough to maim
the slave, that slave was to be freed as compensation
for his injuries.

Some have argued that Ex. 21:21 allows a slave
owner to beat his slave nearly to death and get away
with it or that if the slave dies after a few days the
slave owner is not to be held responsible for the death.
That takes the passage out of context with the other
rules of just treatment and penalties. Because the death
of a slave due to beating is covered in verse 20 and the
significant and long term injury to a slave in verses
26-27, we can infer that this case was different. It was
an injury that didn’t lead to death and it was an injury
that was not permanent.

Leviticus 25:42-46, a Foreigner could be a slave for
life.
Foreigners were not protected from slavery. They were
protected as slaves by the same laws that applied to all
slavery, but they did not have the right of release
after 7 years or at the year of Jubilee. They would be
slaves for life.

Yet, there is no evidence of an institution of slavery.
Apparently, the children of those slaves were not to be
considered slaves. Those children might even have been
considered as Israelites since they would be
circumcised.

Deuteronomy 23:15, runaway slaves.
Slaves who had run away from masters outside of Israel
were to be given refuge and not returned to their
owners. They were to be free.

The land of Israel was a land of refuge for both the
Israelites who were refugees from Egypt and for anyone
else seeking refuge. It was better to be in Israel than
anywhere else. That general principle might be the
guiding principle regarding slavery and foreigners.
Being a slave in Israel for a foreigner was better than
being free outside of Israel. As noted before they were
accorded the same rights as Israelites, except for their
bondage. They had become, as it were, the people of God
and covered by the covenant.

That was a blessing that far outweighed their bondage.
They had the blessing of knowing of God and his mercy.
They had the blessing of knowing God personally, and
many foreigners became fully men and women of faith – as
did Ruth and Rahab.

Tying it all together: Slavery was a reality
everywhere. But it was not universally evil. In some
cases it served the critical needs of a slave for home
and livelihood. In some cases it resulted in the
opportunity for improvement for their families that
would not have been possible otherwise. In every case
from beginning before the law to the end of the Old
Testament, slaves were to be treated generously and with
a sense of equality. Mistreatment of slaves was
punished. A Torah observant, faithful Jew, such as Boaz,
lived a well ordered life following the law as a servant
of Yahweh God. He would not have mistreated his
servant/slaves.

Slavery in the New Testament

Slavery was an institution in the Roman world. At the
beginning of the first century A.D. and through the
second century the number of slaves might have been as
many as 10 million people, 1/6 of the population. Many
had been captured during wars with Rome, but many were
also the children born to those captured and enslaved
enemies. Since Rome had no provision like the Jews of
including the children of slaves in the nation as people
with rights under the covenant of God, slave children
often remained slaves. These slaves might have been
laborers and have been mistreated, but there were also
well educated slaves who served in households as
servants and many times as what we would consider
professionals like teachers and doctors.

When Christian began to make converts among the Romans
and Greeks many of those Romans were slaves, and a few
were even slave owners.

To these Christian slaves and slave owners Paul wrote
instructions in several of his letters to churches and
one letter to a particular slave owner, his friend
Philemon. Here’s what he said:
To slaves he urged obedience to their masters (Ephesians
6:5-8 and 1 Timothy 6:1). They were to render
service to their masters in the same spirit as they were
to serve God. They were to consider their service to
their masters AS service to God. Paul told them that in
so doing they would bring honor to the Lord.

Their life witness to the Lord was more important than
even freedom, especially if that freedom would result in
defrauding their master. Paul even sent runaway slave
Onesimus back to his master Philemon because he did not
want Onesimus to live with the fact that he had not only
wronged Philemon by running away but had apparently
stolen from Philemon when he left and had not returned
what he had stolen (Philemon 14 )

But Paul’s instructions were not to slaves alone. He
also wrote to the masters who were Christians. He wrote
that they treat their slaves with kindness, those who
were believers as fellow believers (Ephesians 6:9).
It is the same thing he asked of Philemon (Philemon
16). But he went beyond merely asking Philemon to
take Onesimus back; he asked Philemon to accept him back
as a redeemed freed man, redeemed by the debt Philemon
owned Paul (Philemon 19)
.
Paul believed that freedom is God’s design for human
beings. He says so in Galatians 3:28 and 4:7.
But that freedom of which he wrote was more than the
freedom from slavery to a human master; it is freedom to
God. And he believes that freedom to God is God’s design
equally for men and women, Jew and Gentile, slave or
free (Galatians 3:28). That freedom to God is our
most urgent need. Freedom from slavery to a human master
is desirable, and if it can be obtained lawfully a slave
should seek it, but if not believers who were slaves
should consider slavery as the place where God had
placed him (1 Corinthians 7:21,22); it was his
job. On the other hand, if you are free, Paul
says, do not choose slavery.

(The last may sound odd, but, in fact, a free man in
Roman society could sell himself into slavery.)

Tying it all together: Slavery is not God’s
design for human beings. But it is a reality in our
world and has always been. God’s laws given to Israel
controlled slavery and made it humane. His commands for
Israel also resulted in foreign slaves having the
rights, privilege and blessing of a natural born
Israelite. That was a blessing that could not be
measured. It made the serving worth the cost.

In the New Testament, Christians were the agents of
freedom. They not only proclaimed the good news
that God had set them free from slavery to sin but by
their transformed lives began the process of changing
the culture. And they did change the culture. Historian
David Brion Davis argues that "the Judaeo-Christian
belief in a monotheistic God who rules over a homogeneous
group of people generally prevented European Christians
from enslaving one another. As more Western Europeans
converted to Christianity, this unified religious
identity enabled the decline of slavery in Europe." Slavery
in Europe

But there remains the sad fact that hundreds of
millions today are in slavery. Had God made a law making
slavery wrong would it all be different? Unlikely. God
made a law against stealing and lying yet there remains
stealing or lying. No. Our selfish human natures pay no
attention to God's laws. What is needed and what God
provided was an inner change of heart and mind that
willingly submits to God's design for a well ordered
life, a heart that is generous to the slave and servant
and careful about his or her good and sets the prisoners
free.

1 comment:

You ask rhetorically - because you go on to answer your own question - whether it would have made any difference if God had made a law declaring that slavery was wrong. No, you say, because humans disregard the laws God did actually set up about stealing and lying. The point is though - disregarding the fact that not everyone steals and lies - he did make laws prohibiting stealing and lying. It seems it was important to him to tell his pet-tribe that these were wrong, even though, according to you, he knew many of their number would ignore him.

What can we conclude from this? That he didn't feel the same way about slavery as he did about lying and stealing; he didn't bother making even the same token effort he had about them with regard to slavery.

Or, and much more likely: the tribes who wrote the scriptures you quote didn't think slavery was wrong. In fact, they thought it quite useful to have slaves around. Given this utility, they were unlikely to devise laws prohibiting it. (The enslaved themselves no doubt thought differently, but they didn't get to write god's laws for him).

And that, Don, is precisely how it happened. The tribes liked having slaves so they didn't prohibit their ownership. Instead, they devised some fairly inhumane laws about keeping them and what should happen if they were maimed or killed.

So, praise the lord, your god is off the hook! Or would be if he really existed.